Commentary: Wildlife and weapons trafficking converge in Southeast Asia

CRIMINAL CONVERGENCE

What’s unique about this case is the convergence of the two criminal economies.

Criminal convergence is the overlapping occurrence of two or more illicit economies in ways that enable each other. This can take several forms, such as when one group diversifies illicit sources of income, two groups barter one illicit good for another or multiple groups share smuggling infrastructure, methods and service providers. 

Convergence empowers criminal actors and exacerbates the impacts of illicit economies, such as armed violence and biodiversity loss. In Southeast Asia, arms trafficking appears to converge most often with drug trafficking and smuggling contraband goods such as untaxed cigarettes, fuel, alcohol or rice.

When firearms converge with wildlife trafficking, it is typically to facilitate poaching, which is itself devastating. Yet there have been few documented incidents in the region of illicit firearms and trafficked wildlife being indirectly bartered.

Part of the reason for this may be that other illicit products – namely drugs and undeclared goods like cigarettes – are far more fungible, easier to source and transport and offer better profit margins.

Firearms are more likely to gravitate around drugs and other contraband as a means of protection and coercion in a risky, competitive market environment. Wildlife traffickers likely do not face similar market pressures.

The North Maluku seizure is therefore a rare fusion of two major criminal economies in Indonesia and the Philippines.

According to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, bird trafficking was once commonplace in markets throughout the country. Government crackdowns since the 1970s and rapid digitisation moved the trade to social media platforms, e-commerce sites, courier services and digital payment systems. 

A 2022 Global Initiative study on online bird trafficking in Indonesia identified over 1,000 unique advertisements for endangered bird species in 600 private Facebook groups.